


Courtship Rites

by ryfkah



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bad Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-27
Updated: 2011-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:41:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And nothing rhymes with beautiful, okay?  <i>Nothing rhymes with beautiful!</i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courtship Rites

"Suki looks cheerful today,” Zuko says, and Sokka, watching her, manages to look studiously casual and enormously smug both at once.

“Oh, yeah, I wrote her a poem last night. She liked it,” he adds, unnecessarily.

“. . . Girls like that stuff?”

Sokka turns his head to look at the Firelord. “Zuko,” he says, kindly, and assumes Lecturing Pose. Zuko may be a year older than Sokka, but Sokka’s always found it pretty easy to ignore this fact. More important is the fact that Zuko has been living basically under a rock for a significant portion of his life – well, okay, on a Fire Nation boat, but that’s basically the same thing; let’s face it, as far as Sokka is concerned, living in the Fire Nation is basically like living under a rock, and this is coming from the guy who grew up in the South Pole – and needs someone wiser to take him under his wing. “ _Zuko_. First of all, poetry isn’t _stuff_. It’s an important cultural art form that allows us to celebrate our feelings and impressions of the beautiful world around us. Second, and more importantly, girls _love_ that stuff.”

Zuko frowns. Zuko is sometimes a slow learner when it comes to romance, but things sink in eventually. “Mai doesn’t . . . always like stuff that most girls like.”

Sokka considers this. On the one hand: he has a point. On the other hand, Mai decided to date _Zuko_ , He Of The Angsty and Tormented Soul. Sokka is pretty sure that this plus the all-black aesthetic indicates at least some secret sensitivity to poetic ideals. “If you make it kind of emo,” he says, “I think she might actually go for it.”

Sokka has cause to regret his helpful advice two days later, when Zuko knocks on his door in the middle of the night. (Fortunately, Sokka is prepared for this kind of thing happening these days. Sokka and Suki have already instituted a secret knock in self-defense. Because never again. _Never again_.)

Zuko looks haggard. There are huge dark circles under his eyes. “Sokka,” he says. “I can’t do this. I _can’t do this_.”

“Calm down,” Sokka says. “And hang on.” He turns around and fishes under his bed for a moment. It is exactly for times like these that he keeps his false beard with him at all times. And Katara laughed and said he’d never use it again! It just goes to show.

“All right,” he says, turning back around and stroking the beard judiciously. “Show me what you’ve got.”

“ _Nothing_!” Zuko throws a pile of parchment onto Sokka’s bed. “The only thing I can rhyme with ‘shiny’ is ‘tiny’. The only thing that rhymes with ‘black’ is ‘shack.’ And nothing rhymes with beautiful, okay? _Nothing rhymes with beautiful_!”

Zuko does not even know how lucky he is that Sokka is here. Zuko should pay Sokka an advisor’s fee or something. “Zuko,” Sokka says, all gentle patience. “Why are you trying to _rhyme_?”

“. . . isn’t that how poetry works?” says Zuko.

“That’s how _songs_ work,” says Sokka. “Poetry’s not about rhyming, buddy, it’s about syllables! Five-seven-five. You can talk about Mai’s freakishly shiny hair all you want and you don’t have to rhyme it with anything.”

Zuko takes a deep breath, calming down. Once again, the power of Sokka’s innate wisdom + the beard is proven. “I really love Mai’s shiny hair,” he says.

“I know, buddy,” Sokka says, and pats him on the shoulder. “I know.”

Sokka would not give any poetry prizes to Zuko’s final efforts, personally. But when Mai receives it, she smiles a tiny amused smile, to which Zuko responds with an enormously dorky grin. Sokka feels that his work here is done.

(The final poem:  
 _Your hair is shiny  
And your eyes are pretty too  
And I like your face._

 _You’re so beautiful  
When you hate the world and then  
Also when you don’t._)

**Author's Note:**

> For the record: I am aware that songs in the cultures that the various Avatarverse cultures are based on don't necessarily conform to the same rhyming conventions as Western songs. However, we have canon for basic song-rhymes from the hippies, which Sokka has reason to remember with, so I ran with it, although actual Fire Nation songs and poetry probably both conform to quite different rules.


End file.
